Avalanche of Awesome, Part 5: River City Ransom (NES #95)

What it lacks in balance, it more than makes up for in charm...

If you mention the "beat-em-up" genre to an American gamer who grew up in the 80's and 90's, there are a handful of games that will likely spring to mind first: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons Arcade game, Final Fight. There are plenty of others as well, but those first two are based on licenses that had a strong American presence at that time, and Final Fight was arguably the most emblematic example of the genre, given how many games came along and shamelessly cloned it later on.

River City Ransom, on the other hand, has probably slipped under the radar of many; the rise of the internet has caused the game to get more attention over the years, although people outside of retro gaming circles probably haven't heard of it. It was one of several games by Technos starring Kunio-Kun, most of which mainly were beat-em-ups, fighting games, or sports titles. Only a handful of them ever came to the US, so we're kind of lucky we even got this one; thank goodness we did, though, because it's a particularly spiffy game that did some very forward-thinking things for a 1989 beat-em-up. It's not perfect, granted - I found more issues to nitpick than I was expecting, given how much some people have hyped it - but it's still a good game, and super-charming to boot.

You play the role of Alex (and his friend Ryan, in a two-player scenario), in a quest to rescue his girlfriend from the evil Slick, who is holding her captive at River City High. Before you can take him down, though, you'll have to fight various street gangs and defeat seven evil leaders in order to open the path to him.

Well, when Technos brought the River City Ransom over to the US, a few things were changed to make the game more "suitable" for American audiences. The traditional Japanese school garb was replaced with T-shirts and jeans, and a lot of the names - including the title of the game itself - were changed. I suppose this makes sense, though - after all, Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari doesn't exactly roll off the American tongue, does it?

The basic controls are about what one would expect from a beat-em-up - A punches, and B kicks - although you can also jump by pressing both buttons at the same time. It's also possible to run by double-tapping left or right on the D-pad, which is especially handy for getting away from foes in the heat of battle. Later in the game, you'll be able to purchase additional moves... which hints at part of what makes River City Ransom such a stand-out among beat-em-ups. Unlike Final Fight, Streets of Rage, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - all of which are solid games, mind you - River City Ransom has one thing none of those games have: a currency system. By beating up thugs and taking their lunch money, you can start saving up for a shopping trip, using your hard-earned cash to upgrade your stats, gain new moves, and top off your health.

The implementation of this fits the setting remarkably well, as all of your upgrade items are the sorts of things that you might see at a shopping center: books, CDs, and all manner of food and drink ranging from coffee and tea to premium steak and expensive sushi. At certain restaurants you can pick up a to-go order, which you can keep in reserve until you need a health boost in the midst of battle. It's a cute touch that feels a little closer to home than, say, buying healing potions in any number of fantasy RPGs.

There are nine stats total in the game: punch, kick, weapon, throwing, agility, defense, strength, will power, and stamina. The first four are more or less self-explanatory, as they simply determine your attack power with the respective types of attacks. Strength and defense affect overall damage dealt and received, and agility affects movement speed. Will power determines how much health you recover when you run out of stamina, although it will decrease by the amount of health recovered when you do. Stamina is basically health, and can be restored up to a set maximum. All of your stats can be increased up to 63 with the exception of stamina, which starts at a max of 63 and can be increased to 127 by recovering health in excess of your current maximum.

As the stat system implies, combat consists of more than just punching and kicking. You can pick up weapons off the ground by pressing A, and then swing them with A or throw them with B. In fact, most anything can be used as a weapon - trash cans, tires, lengths of chain, and even rival gang members can be picked up used as weapons. Granted, regular attacks would generally work fine, but there's something magical about being able to whack someone over the head with a human body.

In addition to the depth offered by the stat upgrade system, the game has loads of personality. When you enter a new screen, the name of the gang currently occupying that section of the city appears at the bottom of the screen. Each gang wears different colored shirts and drops different amounts of money when defeated; as an added touch, each foe even has a unique name. (You'll start to see the same names crop up after awhile, of course, but that's to be expected.) As you run about punching guys to death, their facial expressions are priceless, and they'll even cry for their mom or, more humorously, yell "BARF!" when you land the finishing blow. These special touches aren't limited to combat, either; Alex and Ryan will smile with happy anime eyes in stores, and one of the shops offers "free smiles" to all of its customers, a service you can take advantage of by literally selecting an option off of the shop menu.

There's also, of course, the naked butt that you see when one of your heroes takes a trip to the sauna. Given how strict Nintendo's censors were in those days, it's a bit surprising this stayed in; I guess they didn't really care, though, or else they didn't bother to play that far through the game...

As much as there is to like about this game, though, I can't help but notice some flaws. Sure, it plays well, and it brought forth a number of innovations that even later beat-em-ups would rarely adopt, but the implementation of some of these features is... well, a bit messy.

As cool as the currency and shop system is, it's not nearly as balanced as it could've been. Most of the shop items - and there are dozens upons dozens of them - are useless, since there are several cheap stat-boosters available fairly early on that are way more cost-effective than most everything else in the game. Had the reverse been true, there would be incentive to buy that premium steak or that expensive sushi roll, but the only real reason to do so is to save yourself the tedium of buying dozens of muffins and eating them one at a time. Maxing your stats doesn't take a super-long time, though, and you don't really need to max out every single stat, anyway, so unless you're as compulsive as I am, it might not be that big of a deal.

An arguably worse flaw is that the game gives you no indication of what items raise what stats, and you're left to figure out what everything does on your own. I suppose the mystery of it all masks the imbalance of the system, and knowing everything upfront could suck some of the fun out of the game for some... but then again, blowing $36 bucks on an item that raises a stat that's already maxed isn't too fun, either, especially since some of the game-breaking special move items are comparable in price. Oh, and be very careful about items that boost your stats when equipped, namely shoes - if your stats are high enough, and you put on and take off a pair of shoes, your stats will *permanently* go down according to the amount that the shoes were supposed to boost you.

Also, the effects of stats, while noticeable if you decide to rush ahead too early, don't seem to be as high as they should be. The enemy difficulty curve isn't super-steep, but even with defense maxed the enemies towards the very end of the game can still give you a bit of grief if you're not careful. Thankfully, the penalty for dying is fairly light - you merely lose half of your money and go back to the last mall you visited.

For my money, there were a few goofs in level design that could've been fixed. There's some minor platforming in the warehouse, the factory, and the gym, which doesn't quite feel right given the game's control scheme. The warehouse is probably the worst offender, since the inability to control your momentum in the middle of a jump will make climbing over those boxes a pain in the neck. The gym is a bit irksome too, though... seriously, how was I supposed to know that I needed to climb on the basketball goal to get out of the gym? It looks like part of the background, and I can't imagine someone actually standing on one of those things without knocking it over and killing themselves.

I often hear the term "open-ended" getting tossed around in this game, but in actuality, most of the game is practically laid out in a straight line. There's one little chunk of the game that branches off for a few screens, but everything else is pretty linear, and there's honestly not that much to see - the game map can be traversed in a few minutes if you dash from beginning to end. Still, I suppose you *can* go most anywhere in the game from the very start, since there are no arbitrary roadblocks sectioning off each area. Plus, everything still looks fine, and the visuals are at least true to the game setting.

The worst problem with River City Ransom, though, is probably the password system. Passwords in NES games can be a hassle to deal with, with similar-looking characters and insane lengths; River City Ransom's offend on both fronts, clocking in at 33 characters and showing all characters in the same font color... meaning that it's all too easy to mistake a zero for a capital or lowercase "O" if you're not going out of your way to distinguish between them. I once heard a report, though, of someone entering in a password from a photographed images of the screen and *still* not getting it to work; I have no way of verifying this, but I know there's at least one other NES game for which that holds true, so it's possible. All I can say is that I've had a password fail on me at least once before, for causes unknown...

If you're playing the Virtual Console re-release (which is much cheaper than a hard copy of the game), you can do a suspend save to get around the password issue, though. There's also other version of the game out there - a GBA remake called River City Ransom EX, which seems to fix some of the issues mentioned above, and adds a few other bells and whistles on top of that. I cross-referenced my copy a few times while playing the NES version, but I haven't spent enough time with it to know whether or not it has the same appeal and charm as the first game. It restores the original outfit design for the characters, although "Alex" and "Ryan" are maintained. Unfortunately, the two-player mode from the original is absent in this version, so if you're looking forward to playing with a friend, the original is the way to go.

As a developer, Technos doesn't get as much credit for good soundtracks as, say, Capcom or Konami, but the music here is nonetheless pretty fantastic. Although it doesn't squeeze as many crazy tricks out of the limited NES soundchip as, say, a Mega Man game or a Tim Follin soundtrack, it manages to be catchy and upbeat, and provides a good backdrop to the . The music in Crash 'n' the Boys is probably a little more brilliant, though - although, strangely enough, there's one track that's shared between them. Curious.

I would almost argue that River City Ransom is a hair overrated by its biggest fans - the game has some noticeable problems, and the imbalanced upgrades, occasional moments of ill-fitting platforming, and somewhat clunky password system could be a turn-off for some. Is that enough to kill the game, though? Nah, not really - it's still well worth playing, and it's only five bucks on Virtual Console. For an underrated NES classic that goes for at least three times that much on eBay, it's a great deal, and a good way to pass the time alone or with a friend. Given their creativity and charm, it's a shame that more of these Kunio-Kun games didn't make it to America... but I guess you have to take what you can get, right?

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Where/when purchased: McKay, 1-31-2011

Cost: $5.95 - more than the Virtual Console re-release, but quite a bit cheaper than a cart copy would cost on eBay.

Date Started: 8-5-2011 10:06 PM

Date Finished: 8-8-2011 2:33 PM

Space in the NES notebook: About a page of notes on item effects, as well as a handful of passwords and a map of the game with boss locations.

FAQs/assistance used: None that I can recall.

Favorite part?: The first part of the game, probably, before the tedium of testing shop items started to set in.

Difficulty: Moderate. The end is a little tougher, but the password system and the light death penalty keeps things manageable. (For those who want it, there's a hard mode as well, which toughens things up a bit).

Worth it?: I'd say so; it's not perfect, granted, so I don't want to overhype it, but it's an enjoyable experience, for sure.

Comments (3)

RRR

the music is fantastic. I sampled it a long time ago through an emulator and had a lot of fun with it. It has it's flaws, but it's still a far greater beat em up than the big hits, I think. It's just plain charming.

great review, as always. miss u around here. these things are too rare.

I'm hoping...

...to start getting more of these done; I'm over a year behind on reviews (note the playthrough dates on this one), but once I hit a certain point I'll start getting to the ones that I already have written, and the process should go more quickly.

Super Boy Alan

I definitely agree with you on the jumping; it's quite sloppy. I used to dread going into the tire garage because of that one tricky jump to get to the top level.

There are several differences between the NES and GBA River City Ransom, most of which are unfavorable. The save system in the GBA game is a complete trainwreck; you get a certain amount of slots, but there is no overwrite function. You have to go in and manually delete the saves to get slots back so you can continue to save. Also, the book system is drastically different. I think you can only have a maximum of three books equipped, and not all of them are available for purchase. You have to recruit different characters during several playthroughs who might be carrying the specific book you want. It's unnecessarily complicated, and I'd rather play the simpler NES version (crappy passwords and all).

That said, the reasons I have fond memories of RCR is due to the multi-player and the rpg elements. It was different and gave me quite a bit to play around with back in the day.